Page 44 of Play of Shadows

Rhyleis abruptly stopped, turned and shouted so loudly the rafters shook, ‘She’snot.A fucking.Bardatti!’

Every head in the crowded tavern turned to gape at her.

‘Oh, the Hells for it,’ Rhyleis swore, and dragged me from the room. ‘We need somewhere with fewer eyes and ears.’ She kicked open the door that led out to the Ponta Mervigli. ‘It’s high time someone told you what it means to be a Veristor, and why you, Damelas Chademantaigne, might just be the most fucked man in the entire country.’

Chapter 20

The Bardatti

Rhyleis grimaced at the stench of smoke and beer clinging to our clothes and accentuated by the crisp night air. ‘Taverns that serve ale the calibre of that piss ought to be burned to the ground,’ she complained as we descended the stone steps beneath the bridge to the bazaar stretching along the dried-out canal.

The ramshackle shops – some little more than crude shelters, others pieced together from the salvaged hulls of sunken barges – offered up everything from brass trinkets and fixtures plundered from those same vessels, to greenish-brown vegetables ingeniously grown in the canal dirt and laid out alongside meats of even more dubious ancestry.

Most common by far were the sleazy, smoke-filled dens of iniquity purveying hard liquors and even harder drugs to the despairing and desperate. I couldn’t help but shudder at the sight of droopy-eyed, staggering customers queueing to hand over what little money they had in exchange for a night’s distraction.

When did the people of this city become so determined to dull their senses and sink into every oblivion offered them?I wondered.

Since his coronation, Duke Monsegino had put out any number of decrees aimed at curbing the recent rise in the manufacture and importation of endless varieties of dreamweed, pleasure peppers and sleep serums, not to mention those fouler substances used to induce compliance and forgetfulness, but nobody was paying the slightest attention to the Violet Duke’s admonitions.

‘I take it back,’ Rhyleis said, sparing a scathing glance at the drug-pedlars and their patrons. ‘Leave the Tavern-On-The-Ponta where it is and burn the rest of this shithole of a city around it instead.’

The Bardatti was a prickly sort, I decided: quick to anger, quick to mock, quickest of all to judge.

‘How long have you been playing for the Divine Heraphina?’ I asked, hoping to turn the conversation back to her knowledge of Veristors.

She barked out a laugh. ‘“Divine Heraphina”? You mean Silga Swaybottom back there? Tonight’s my first night covering her arse. I thought it best to discover if she had even a glimmer of genuine Bardatti talent before I throttled her.’

‘Are you serious?’

She sighed. ‘Probably not. The new First Cantor of the Greatcoats takes poorly to wanton acts of murder, even when they’re richly deserved. I’ll likely have to settle for carving that winged key tattoo off her belly.’

Before I could suggest that might also be a touch severe, Rhyleis turned her fiery gaze on me. ‘I’m sick of talentless frauds wandering the countryside, flaunting Bardatti brooches and passing themselves off as Troubadours or Danzores, bilking the gullible. It’s time these pretenders paid the price for their deceptions.’

As she shook her fist, I noted a tiny guitar with the neck shaped like a key securing her cuff. All too aware of the Veristor mark atmy own collar, I wondered what price Rhyleis might choose to extract from someone impersonating a sacred actor.

‘If Heraphina isn’t a proper Bardatti,’ I began cautiously, ‘then how did she know who I was?’

‘She didn’t, you idiot! That big oaf you hang about with can be found every other night at the Ponta, drinking himself senseless as he drones on endlessly about the “noble art of the player”. Everyone there knows him.’

‘But the Div—’ Catching her glare, I corrected myself, ‘Silgaknew who I was. She knew all about my past.’

Rhyleis rolled her eyes. ‘Saints, have you never met a professional swindler before? I’ve only been in this city a week and even I’m bored of hearing about the goings-on at the Operato Belleza. The oddsmakers are taking bets on how many days this play will run before somebody kills you– and there’s a side wager guessing the means of your execution. Most are split between the duke hanging you for treason or the Vixen deciding she’s tired of waiting and just burying her blade in your belly.’

I tried not to flinch. ‘If we could return to the subject at hand. . .’

But Rhyleis was unstoppable. ‘Now,mymoney’s on you turning up one morning in an alley with half a dozen spikes in your skull courtesy of these Iron Orchids.’ She leaned closer to me and whispered, ‘Right alongside your new patron.’

‘You think Duke Monsegino is in danger?’

‘Why else would I have come to this rancid fleapit you call a city? The ambiance?’

‘I thought you came to rain unholy terror on those who dare impersonate Bardatti.’

Rhyleis stopped and gave me a wicked grin. ‘Well. . . you might say planning Silga’s well-deserved demise is more of a hobby. I’m mostly here on a mission for the Trattari.’

It was the second time she’d brought up the Greatcoats. Hersideways glance made me suspect she was goading me for a reaction; calling them ‘Trattari’ or ‘tatter-cloak’ would have immediately set off my grandparents. But I wasn’t a Greatcoat, and I wasn’t going to be provoked.

‘First you claim to be a Bardatti, now you’re a magistrate, too?’ I asked.

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